Author: PolitCens

U.S. President Joe Biden took office three months ago working with a Congress narrowly controlled by Democrats. While Biden faced twin economic and public health crises caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Capitol Hill was consumed by the second impeachment trial of his predecessor, Donald Trump. VOA congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson looks at the new president’s dealings with lawmakers during his first 100 days.Producer: Katherine Gypson. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden and key administration officials are embarking on an extensive campaign to promote his $4 trillion spending proposals to repair the country’s infrastructure and boost assistance for children and families.On Thursday, his 100th day in office, Biden headed to the southern state of Georgia, a key political battleground he narrowly captured in the November election to hold a campaign-style drive-in rally near the state’s biggest city, Atlanta.His effort comes the day after his first address to a joint session of Congress in which he laid out what he called a “blue-collar blueprint” to help middle-class Americans gain or maintain family financial stability.In the coming days, he is planning other events in the eastern states of Pennsylvania and Virginia, with the rallies aimed at winning support from voters to pressure skeptical lawmakers in Washington to approve his plans to speed the American economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.In the politically divided Congress, Biden’s plans are drawing wide support from Democratic lawmakers aligned with the president, but almost no applause from opposition Republicans, who oppose the spending as too extensive and object to Biden’s plans to raise taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals to pay for the programs.Biden Tells Lawmakers He’s Open to Compromise on US Infrastructure PackageUS president wants to spend $2 trillion to fund projects that would create jobs for millions of Americans but Republicans seek to trim the size and cost of the package Vice President Kamala Harris is headed Thursday to Baltimore, Maryland, to promote the Biden plans, and to the Midwestern state of Ohio on Friday, while her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, is speaking in the mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina.Biden Cabinet members are also delivering speeches across the country to promote his proposals.While the number of coronavirus deaths and new infections have slowed in the U.S. and the economy grew by 6.4% in the first three months of the year, Biden is attempting to use the spending clout of the national government to add jobs, rebuild aging infrastructure and create a new, heretofore unknown economic safety net for American families.Georgia’s Democratic Party said Biden would appear at a “Getting America Back on Track” rally in the city of Duluth, located 50 kilometers north of Atlanta.Republican presidential candidates have long captured Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, but Biden defeated former President Donald Trump by nearly 12,000 votes out of 2.9 million ballots that were cast, even as Trump continues to make unfounded claims that he was cheated out of winning the state. It was the first victory in the state for a Democratic presidential candidate in 28 years.Subsequently, two Democrats, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, won Senate run-off elections in early January, creating a politically divided Senate, with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats.The Democratic victories pushed the Republican-controlled state legislature to enact tighter election laws that Democrats say are likely to trim the number of minorities, especially Blacks, who vote in upcoming elections. Biden has opposed the new Georgia law, calling it “sick” and “un-American.”While in Georgia, Biden and first lady Jill Biden, plan to visit former President Jimmy Carter, a close friend who at 96 is the longest-living U.S. president, and his wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who is 93. The Carters were unable to attend Biden’s inauguration in January because of the pandemic.
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In his first joint address to Congress, U.S. President Joe Biden called on lawmakers to provide bipartisan support for his $4 trillion economic plan he said would provide Americans relief from the COVID-19 pandemic and make the U.S. more competitive with China.
 
“Now, after just 100 days, I can report to the nation America is on the move again,” Biden declared.
 
Here are several key takeaways from Biden’s speech:  
 Women Make History
 
Biden was the first U.S. president to deliver a speech to Congress with two women sitting behind him on the dais: Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
   Jobs and Big Government
 
Unlike many of his recent predecessors, Biden embraced the role the federal government can play in improving lives. He said his $1.8 trillion spending package includes funding for preschool expansion, child-care subsidies and the establishment a national family and medical leave program.
 
Biden also touted his $2.3 trillion plan to rebuild roads and bridges, expand broadband access, particularly in rural areas, and other infrastructure projects such as revitalizing the country’s fragile power grid.
 Rival China
 
Biden argued that investing in the U.S. economy was needed to compete with China, a country with growing global influence and the world’s second largest economy that is also one of the world’s fastest growing.
 Immigration
 
The president appealed to Republican lawmakers who have voiced support for providing a path to U.S. citizenship for people who entered the country illegally as children, one of the issues he vowed to address during his presidential campaign.
 
“The country supports it,” Biden said several times. “Congress should act.”
 Jan. 6 Insurrection and Democracy
 
Biden recalled the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to block certification of his election and challenged Americans to do more to show the world that democracy remains intact.
 
“They look at the images of the mob that assaulted this Capitol as proof that the sun is setting on American democracy. They are wrong. And we have to prove them wrong. We have to prove democracy still works,” Biden declared.
 Racial Justice-Police Bill
 
Biden urged lawmakers to address the disproportionate number of Black men and women killed by police, a plea that came a week after former Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin was convicted of killing George Floyd.
 
“We have all seen the knee of injustice on the neck of Black America. Now is our opportunity to make real progress,” Biden said.
 
The president called on Congress to approve police reform legislation officially known as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020 by the first anniversary of Floyd’s May 25 death in police custody, the first time he put a deadline on the issue.
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More than three months after being sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, President Joe Biden will soon pass a milestone: his first 100 days in office.  
 
On Friday, April 30, administration officials, reporters, the general public and Biden himself will mark the benchmark. But many Americans and people overseas may be wondering what is so special about a president’s first 100 days.
 
Despite the attention to the day, nothing in U.S. law or the U.S Constitution gives any significance to a president’s first 100 days.  
 
In fact, there is nothing inherently more important about a president’s first 100 days in office than, say, the second 100 days or any other time differentiation of a president’s four-year term, which totals 1,461 days.
 
However, while the 100-day mark is mostly an arbitrary milestone, it has nevertheless become an important symbolic marker when news organizations, political analysts and academics consider how a new president’s administration is doing. The first 100 days often gives an indication of a president’s management style, priorities and speed in implementing campaign promises.
 Why 100 days?
 
For more than 150 years of American presidential history, no one was particularity interested in a president’s first 100 days. That changed, however, during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was first elected in 1932, during the Great Depression.
 
Roosevelt set out to make significant and quick changes in economic and social policy, through both legislative and regulatory actions.
 
On taking office, he summoned the U.S. Congress to a three-month special session and, by the end of his first 100 days, had passed 76 new laws, mostly aimed at easing the effects of the Depression.
 
Shortly after taking office, Roosevelt also gave the first of many so-called “fireside chats” in which he spoke directly to the American public over the radio and explained in simple terms how he was trying to solve the country’s problems.  
 
In one fireside chat, the president noted how busy and important his first 100 days had been. The term stuck.
 A high bar
 
Since then, U.S. presidents have understood they will be measured by how ambitious and successful their first 100 days in office are.
 
While the 100-day milestone is mostly arbitrary, the early days of a presidency can be a choice time for new presidents to make big gains in their agenda. A new president is usually still popular with the public, and lawmakers often have incentive to cooperate with a new leader, creating an opportunity for a president to pass major legislation.FILE – President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his annual message to Congress, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 7, 1943.While many presidents have pushed through legislation at the beginning of their first term, historians have found that no modern president has done as much in the first 100 days as Franklin D. Roosevelt.
 
Roosevelt faced the unique circumstances of entering office during the Great Depression, the likes of which other presidents had not encountered.  
 
As a result, many presidents try to lower expectations about what they can do in their first 100 days. As President John F. Kennedy said at his 1961 inauguration ceremony, “All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
 
One of President Barack Obama’s senior advisers, David Axelrod, called the 100-day benchmark the “journalistic equivalent of a Hallmark holiday” because it attracts a lot of fanfare but has no real significance.
 Biden’s report card
 
Like Roosevelt, Biden also took office during a time of crisis — with the coronavirus pandemic gripping the world — and has sought to quickly act as president.  
 
In his first 100 days, Biden has signed a host of executive orders relating to the pandemic and pushed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill through Congress.  
 
Biden’s goal of administrating 200 million COVID-19 vaccinations in his first 100 days was met early, allowing the president to double his promised doses.
 
According to an Associated Press tracker, Biden has fulfilled or started to fulfill all his key campaign promises concerning fighting the coronavirus. Overall, the AP finds Biden has fulfilled 25 out of 61 promises and has started on 33 others.
 
In terms of the number of laws passed, Biden has signed 11 bills in his first 100 days, according to the website GovTrack, a relatively low number, with only George W. Bush signing fewer in modern history. The presidents who passed the most laws in their first 100 days after Roosevelt were Harry Truman, with 53, Kennedy, with 26, and Bill Clinton, with 22.
 
Biden has signed the most executive actions, which do not require passage through Congress, after Roosevelt, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
 
The project says Biden has signed more than 100 executive orders, memoranda or proclamations since taking office. Before Biden, former President Trump held the No. 2 spot, with more than 85.
 Remaining term
 
While a president’s first 100 days are an important indication of how a president is faring, they do not always indicate what actions a leader will take later in their term.
 
In fact, many observers point out that the major issues previous presidents faced often came much later in their terms. For example, George W. Bush had been president for more than 200 days when terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. President Ronald Reagan was in his second term when he famously called on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.  
 
Roosevelt was also equally defined by events happening later in his presidential term:  In 1941, he led the United States into World War II. 
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U.S. Senator Tim Scott said President Joe Biden has failed to unite the nation and that his proposals for infrastructure spending and the newly announced package for education and families are pulling the nation further apart. Delivering the Republican response to the Democratic president’s first joint address to Congress on Wednesday night, Scott said, “Our nation is starving for more than empty platitudes.” Biden spent a section of his address celebrating the progress in combatting the coronavirus pandemic, including far exceeding his administration’s goal for vaccinations at this point in his presidency. Scott said Biden “inherited a tide that had already turned,” crediting the Trump administration’s program to accelerate vaccine development, as well as several packages Congress passed last year to deliver trillions of dollars in aid to business, state governments and direct payments to individuals.Television lighting is set up near the U.S. Capitol as U.S. President Joe Biden delivers his first address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in Washington, April 29, 2021.He described Democrats as unwilling to work with Republicans on more aid, as Democrats passed a new round of coronavirus aid after Biden took office. The parties clashed over the size of that measure, with Democrats arguing the government needed to take more action, while Republicans argued for more targeted spending. Scott also expressed objection to the pace of schools reopening amid the pandemic, arguing that other countries had already allowed their children to go back to their classrooms. “Science has shown for months that schools are safe,” he said. Responding to Biden’s new proposal to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans to pay for expanded access to preschool, community college, child care and paid family leave, Scott described the plan as putting the federal government “more in the middle of your life, from the cradle to college.” He said families should be able to define the American dream for themselves and that there should be expanded opportunities for all. Scott, who is the only Black Republican senator, also said Democrats have brought race into unrelated policy disputes, saying, “Race is not a political weapon to settle every issue.” “Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them,” Scott said. “If they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor. From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress. By doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal.” He added, “America is not a racist country.” 
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In his first address to the joint session of Congress Wednesday night, President Joe Biden pitched his ambitious infrastructure and jobs plan while casting government as a force for good. The American presidential tradition was noticeably different in many ways, due to COVID-19 protocols. VOA’s White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made history Wednesday as the first women to share the stage in Congress during a presidential address. In President Joe Biden’s first prime-time speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, he was flanked by Pelosi and Harris, two California Democrats.  “It’s pretty exciting. And it’s wonderful to make history. It’s about time,” Pelosi said hours before the speech during an interview on MSNBC. Pelosi already knows what it feels like to sit on the rostrum in the House chamber and introduce a president for speeches. She has sat there for several addresses by Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.  FILE – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California waits before then-President Donald Trump arrives to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 4, 2020.Women’s advocates said seeing Harris and Pelosi seated together behind Biden would be a “beautiful moment.” But they noted that electing a woman to sit in the Oval Office remains to be achieved, along with the addition of an equal rights amendment to the Constitution. Biden helped usher the moment along by pledging to pick a woman for his running mate and selecting Harris, then a U.S. senator from California. “This is a great start, and we have to continue to move forward to give women their equal due,” said Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women. Pelosi made history by becoming the first female House speaker during Bush’s presidency. He acknowledged the moment by noting during his address to Congress after Pelosi’s election that he had the privilege of being the first president to open with the words “Madam Speaker.” Pelosi, 81, reclaimed the powerful leadership post during Trump’s presidency and sat behind him during his final two speeches to Congress, famously ripping up her copy of Trump’s remarks in 2020 after he finished addressing lawmakers. Harris, 56, made history last year when she became the first woman and first Black and Indian American person elected vice president. In her role as president of the Senate, she joins Pelosi in presiding over the joint session of Congress.  FILE – In this image from Senate TV, Vice President Kamala Harris sits in the chair on the Senate floor to cast the tie-breaking vote, her first, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 5, 2021.Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said Wednesday night would show men, women, boys and girls that women can attain and hold high-level positions and that they are as entitled to them as men are. Walsh also noted Biden’s promise to put a woman on his ticket, and pointed, as well, to the diversity of his Cabinet. She said the setting behind Biden on Wednesday was likely to make him feel proud — not just personally, “but I also think proud for the country and proud for his party. And I think he will clearly see the historic implications of this and the role that he played in making that happen.” “For all of us who care about women’s public leadership, we still look forward to the day when the person standing at the podium, in front, is a woman,” Walsh added. “But for now, this is a particularly gratifying moment.”  Harris’ office declined to comment Wednesday on her historic role in the president’s address, preferring to let the moment speak for itself. Apart from the speech Wednesday, Harris and Pelosi have notched another first in U.S. and women’s history. They are first and second, respectively, in the line of presidential succession. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. Human rights leaders have welcomed strong statements from the new administration but say action must follow. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more.Camera: Ricardo Montañana, VOA Burmese Service.   
 
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U.S. federal agents seized electronic devices in daybreak raids Wednesday at the New York home and office of Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor who became former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, as investigators probe Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine linked to Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.Robert Costello, Giuliani’s lawyer, confirmed that agents had executed a search warrant for the two Giuliani locations, but condemned the raids.“What they did today was legal thuggery,” Costello told The New York Times. “Why would you do this to anyone, let alone someone who was the associate attorney general, United States attorney, the mayor of New York City, and the personal lawyer to the 45th president of the United States?”FILE – Rudy Giuliani, as an attorney for President Donald Trump, addresses a gathering during a campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Aug. 1, 2018.The long-running investigation conducted by U.S. prosecutors in New York centers on whether Giuliani, an outspoken Trump political supporter and adviser last year, acted illegally as an unregistered foreign agent and sought to influence U.S. policy toward Ukraine.Giuliani, ahead of the November election that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, sought information in Ukraine that might have been damaging to then-candidate Biden, especially as it related to the lucrative payments made to his son, Hunter Biden, for his work on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company. At the same time, the elder Biden oversaw U.S. policy on Ukraine when he was vice president under former President Barack Obama.Investigators are also looking at the role Giuliani played in Trump’s eventual ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who testified about her experiences during the Trump administration at Trump’s first impeachment case in the House of Representatives.As part of the pressure campaign to investigate then-candidate Biden’s activities in Ukraine, Trump personally appealed to Ukraine’s president in a July 2019 phone call to provide damaging evidence about Biden and his son, leading to the first of Trump’s two impeachments.The Democratic-controlled House charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, but he was later acquitted in the then-Republican-controlled Senate.
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U.S. President Joe Biden is proposing a wide expansion of national government assistance for American children and families on Wednesday as he prepares to make his first address to a joint session of Congress.President Joe Biden removes his face mask to speak about COVID-19, on the North Lawn of the White House, April 27, 2021, in Washington.Biden plans to lay out details of his $1.8 trillion proposal in a nationally televised speech, being witnessed in person by about 200 socially distanced, mask-wearing lawmakers and key U.S. officials in the House of Representatives chamber. Normally, the crowd for such an address would be 1,600 but is being sharply limited Wednesday night by the ongoing threat of the coronavirus.The plan features two years of government-paid, pre-kindergarten education for the country’s youths and two years of free community college for young adults, all of it to be paid for with higher taxes on the country’s wealthiest people.In addition, Biden’s proposal calls for $225 billion in child-care assistance for U.S. families and monthly payments of at least $250 to parents, a heretofore unknown U.S. social safety net.In advance of the speech, the White House called the spending plans for families and education, as well as a previous call for $2.3 trillion in infrastructure funding, “once-in-a-generation investments in our nation’s future.”It is spending, if approved by Congress, that would usher in a much bigger national government footprint in American life, way more than most Republican lawmakers would like but not go as far as some progressive Democrats say they envision. “President Biden knows a strong middle class is the backbone of America,” the White House said. “He knows it should be easier for American families to break into the middle class, and easier to stay in the middle class.”“Unlike in past decades,” the White House concluded, “policies to make life easier for American families must focus on bringing everyone along: inclusive of gender, race, or place of residence – urban, suburban, or rural.”Whether Biden’s spending plans have any chance of enactment is an open question in Washington.Biden, a Democrat who took office January 20, won approval for a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package without the support of a single vote from opposition Republican lawmakers, relying totally on the narrow Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress.Already, Republicans are attacking his infrastructure and family spending plans as too costly and assailing Biden’s plans to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest of Americans. Under Biden’s prescription, those who earn more than $400,000 annually would have to pay higher federal income taxes and those earning more than $1 million annually would pay much higher taxes on their profits when they sell stock investments. The Senate Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said Tuesday that Biden’s three-plus-month presidency “can best be described as the Biden bait and switch.”
“President Biden ran as a moderate, but I’m hard pressed to think of anything at all that he’s done so far that would indicate some degree of moderation,” McConnell said.National surveys this week show Biden with an average approval rating of 53%, according to a polling aggregator, Real Clear Politics.Biden will be speaking from the same dais in the House chamber that insurrectionists overtook on January 6 as supporters of his predecessor, Donald Trump, stormed past law enforcement officers into the U.S. Capitol, in an effort to block Biden’s official certification as the winner of last November’s election over Trump.White House officials say Biden, the country’s 46th president and at 78 its oldest, is likely to refer to the attack on the Capitol that left five people dead. More than 400 people were arrested on various charges.The Capitol is now heavily guarded and still surrounded by black fencing, although some National Guard troops who were guarding the perimeter have returned home.In his speech, Biden is also likely to tout his early success in getting Americans vaccinated against the coronavirus, with more than 200 million shots already administered even as the death toll has risen to a world-leading total of more than 573,000. U.S. health officials eased mask-wearing suggestions this week, but millions of Americans are refusing, for various reasons, to get inoculated, or skipping the second shot of a two-dose regimen.In addition to discussing his plans for domestic spending, Biden is expected to discuss his goal of engaging with other nations and taking a leadership role on the world stage, a contrast from Trump who often touted his “America First” stance and withdrew from international pacts that he viewed as poorly crafted or too costly for the United States.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that Biden’s comments on foreign policy would include “taking America’s seat back in the world, what our values are as a country.”  She said the president would likely talk about a number of foreign policy priorities, “including our engagement with China.”  The Biden administration’s push to work more closely with allies included this month’s coordination with fellow NATO members on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the longest U.S. war started to fight terrorists who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001. On his first day in office, Biden rejoined the Paris climate change pact.
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Upon taking office, President Joe Biden pledged to bring multilateralism back to U.S. foreign policy, a pivot from the America First doctrine under President Donald Trump. Here are some areas where Biden has kept his promise to reengage with the world, and some where he may be holding back.   Climate change  Last week the world witnessed a dramatic foreign policy shift between a president who withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord commitments to one who convened FILE – World leaders are shown on a screen as President Joe Biden speaks to the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate, from the East Room of the White House, April 23, 2021.At the summit, Biden announced he will cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels and rallied leaders to declare their own ambitious targets in the run-up to the U.N. Conference on climate later this year in Glasgow. The U.S. is also doubling its annual public climate financing to help developing countries by 2024, renewing the so far unmet pledge by developed countries to increase climate financing to at least $100 billion per year by 2020.     But the global effort on climate change will depend on its largest emitters. Citing the challenge of achieving carbon neutrality in such a short time frame while maintaining its rapid economic development, Chinese President Xi Jinping stuck with Beijing’s initial target of 2060. India, the world’s third largest emitter, and Russia, the fourth largest also made no new commitments on reducing emissions.    Nuclear arms control  Under Biden, the U.S. has revived arms control efforts, part of the president’s plan to downgrade nuclear weapons in U.S. defense policy and to extend the New START treaty with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The administration has returned to indirect nuclear negotiations with Iran, an about-face from Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Signed by Iran and world powers, the JCPOA placed restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.    FILE – Attendees wait for the start of a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission in Vienna, Austria, April 17, 2021. (EU Delegation in Vienna/Handout via Reuters)Negotiations have been difficult, partly because the Iranians are demanding all sanctions be removed — something the administration is unwilling to do. With many forces inside Iran’s political establishment, regional powers including Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as Republicans in Congress rejecting the deal’s revival, Biden’s slow, step by step process may be a liability, said Mohsen Milani, executive director of the Center for Strategic & Diplomatic Studies and professor of politics at the University of South Florida. “The longer these negotiations take, the more these forces have the chance to sabotage the process and derail it,” he said.   On North Korea, Biden is strengthening alliances with Japan and South Korea to help restrain Pyongyang, rather than personally courting Kim Jong Un as Trump had done. Still, the central challenge is having a decades-old U.S. policy that demands the North Korean leader give up all his nuclear weapons in one fell swoop, despite no indication that he would, said Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. “Working well with allies won’t change the fact that our policy needs to be grounded in realism and in sound diagnosis of the problem,” O’Hanlon said. “It’s not clear we are headed there yet.”    Pandemic recovery    In July 2020, President Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization, accusing the U.N. body of being under China’s control in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. While Biden rejoined the WHO in the first hours of his presidency, some 100 days later he has yet to offer a comprehensive strategy to speed up global pandemic recovery efforts.     On vaccine sharing, the Biden administration is operating on a strategy of “oversupplied and overprepared” to ensure that it is prepared to vaccinate children and deal with emerging variants. Only this week did the White House announce it will begin sharing up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines, unused in the U.S. because it has not yet been granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.    FILE – Nursing home residents receive a coronavirus vaccine at King David Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, a nursing home facility, in Brooklyn’s Bath Beach neighborhood in New York City, Jan. 6, 2021.But with some 230 million doses administered and 29 percent of Americans fully vaccinated, the Biden White House is under pressure to do more, including to support the temporary waiver of TRIPS — Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights — to be discussed at a formal meeting at the World Trade Organization on April 30. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said so far there has been no decision on a waiver, which would allow countries to make generic versions of the vaccines.    Mathew Kavanagh, director of the Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown University, said it “looks incredibly stingy” and “geopolitically dumb” for the administration not to get behind vaccine patent waivers, especially considering aggressive Chinese and Russian vaccine diplomacy.“The administration says it’s serious about multilateralism but is so far ignoring calls from WHO, the U.N., and African, Asian, and Latin American governments to share the vaccine science,” Kavanagh said.    In March, Biden and other leaders of the Quad countries — Australia, India, and Japan — launched a financing plan to boost COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution for countries in the region, with a focus on Southeast Asia, where the Chinese have been aggressively pushing vaccine diplomacy efforts. The initiative is in addition to the $4 billion that was approved under the Trump administration to support COVAX, the U.N. mechanism to ensure vaccine access to middle-and lower-income countries.    Meanwhile Biden is criticized by conservatives for not continuing Trump’s push for reforms at the WHO. The world deserves an accountable and effective World Health Organization, said Brett D. Schaefer, the Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. “By failing to tie U.S. membership and funding to reform, Biden squandered key leverage and made this outcome less likely.”    Trade agreements  Americans of various political leanings, not just Republicans, have embraced Trump’s populist anti-globalization narrative. That means there now appears to be little political will to strike new international trade deals.    In Congress for example, there is little appetite to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the 11-country free trade deal spanning Asia and the Pacific.  In the meantime, Beijing last year finalized its 15-nation trade deal called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. RCEP members make up nearly a third of the world’s population and account for 29% of global gross domestic product.    Analysts say China’s emergence as a major U.S. competitor means the Biden administration may need to include trade agreements as a larger part of its foreign policy approach. Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, said there is a need to reassure America’s trading partners that Washington will be a reliable partner if they face economic retaliation from China. Otherwise, he said, “they will continue to hedge against the prospect of America as not being sufficiently reliable as a partner,” and that could mean less cooperation on U.S. policy priorities.  
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U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to discuss his goal of engaging with other nations and taking a leadership role on the world stage as he gives an address Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said ahead of the speech that Biden’s comments on foreign policy would include “taking America’s seat back in the world, what our values are as a country.”  She said the president would likely talk about a number of foreign policy priorities, “including our engagement with China.” The Biden administration’s push to work more with allies, which this month included coordinating with fellow NATO members on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, is a departure from four years of foreign policy under former President Donald Trump that focused on prioritizing U.S. interests. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited Biden to the House chamber to speak about “vision for addressing the challenges and opportunities of this historic moment,” in a speech that comes as the president marks 100 days since taking office. Psaki said the main policy initiative Biden will highlight is a domestic program for “investment in education and childcare.”President Joe Biden removes his face mask to speak about COVID-19, on the North Lawn of the White House, April 27, 2021, in Washington. The proposal involves $1.8 trillion in spending over 10 years that includes universal preschool, two years of free community college, subsidized childcare for qualifying families, monthly payments of at least $250 for parents and expanding availability of free and reduced-fee school lunches.  Administration officials say Biden is proposing to largely pay for the initiatives with tax increases on the wealthiest Americans.   Psaki said Biden will also discuss the administration’s efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic and unemployment, as well as immigration, police reform and gun safety.  The administration is planning the speech as a launching point to seek support for Biden’s initiatives, with the president, Vice President Kamala Harris and members of Biden’s Cabinet planning to travel to different parts of the country for events on Thursday and Friday. Republicans will seek to counter Biden’s message with a rebuttal speech Wednesday by South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. Typically, a presidential speech before a joint session of Congress would include an invited audience of the 535 members of the House and Senate, the vice president, Cabinet members, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Supreme Court justices, members of the diplomatic corps, and a number of special guests sitting with the first lady, some whom the president notes in the speech as a way of highlighting a certain policy. Wednesday’s audience will be more restricted.  Chief Justice John Roberts is expected to be the only justice in attendance. Psaki also said there will not be the traditional box of seating with first lady Jill Biden and guests, and that Cabinet members will be watching the speech from home. Not having Cabinet members in the House chamber also eliminates another tradition linked to presidential addresses.  In order to ensure continuity of government in case of a disaster, one Cabinet member is typically selected to stay away from the Capitol so that high-level officials are not all in the same place. Wednesday’s speech will be conducted under heavy security, with a ring of fencing still standing in the immediate area surrounding the Capitol following the January 6 storming of the site by Trump supporters.  Security has eased somewhat in Washington since the attack, with a more extensive perimeter fence on Capitol Hill and another temporary fence extending beyond the White House complex now removed. 
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President Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday will take place in a U.S. Capitol on high alert, with memories fresh of the deadly January 6 attack on the building by supporters of his predecessor, Donald Trump. The crowd inside the Capitol will be a small fraction of the hundreds of members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, top government officials and guests who typically attend, to allow for more social distancing in a COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 572,000 Americans. But security will be higher than usual, even for what is officially designated a “National Special Security Event,” with the Secret Service in charge of security. “The Secret Service and all law enforcement and public safety partners have worked hard collectively in preparation to secure this significant event,” said a Secret Service representative, adding that “every security contingency is accounted for.” FILE – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol, Feb. 26, 2021.U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday said she is confident about security for Biden’s speech. “I actually had a very strong briefing on Monday. I said I wish I had had this briefing, you know, before January 6. But we insisted on knowing every detail of it,” she told reporters. The limitations on attendance, she said, mostly are being driven by COVID-19 precautions, but security also is playing a role. The white-domed building is still surrounded by a black steel mesh fence with some 2,250 armed National Guard troops from the District of Columbia and 18 states on duty in the city — the vestiges of a much larger force put in place after Trump supporters stormed the building as Congress was voting to certify Biden’s election victory. Five people, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer, died from or following the violence, and dozens of police were injured in clashes with rioters. More than 400 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and authorities expect at least 100 more will be charged, federal prosecutors said in a court filing last week. District of Columbia authorities have asked the Pentagon to authorize the district’s National Guard contingent to help local police handle any anti-Biden protests coinciding with Wednesday’s address. “The D.C. National Guard is prepared to support D.C. law enforcement, pending approval” by Acting Army Secretary John Whitley, the D.C. National Guard said in a statement. It was not immediately known if Whitley would approve the request. The National Guard deployment already has cost more than $520 million, according to the U.S. National Guard Bureau. 
 
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President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will visit the 39th president, Jimmy Carter, and his wife, Rosalynn, while in Georgia this week, the White House said Tuesday. The White House had previously announced that Biden would attend a drive-in rally in Atlanta on Thursday to mark his 100th day in office, which comes a day after his first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening. The Bidens will now add in a trip to Plains, Georgia, to visit the Carters.In this image from video, former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, seen in a photo as they speak on audio only, during the second night of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 18, 2020.The 96-year-old former president and the 93-year-old former first lady were unable to attend Biden’s inauguration because of the coronavirus pandemic. Both couples are now vaccinated, and the Carters have resumed worshipping in-person at their longtime church.  Biden was a young Delaware senator and Carter ally during the Georgian’s term in the White House, from 1977 to 1981. Carter is now the longest-lived American president in history. 
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European leaders and other American allies say President Joe Biden has done much in his first 100 days in the White House to start rebuilding confidence in U.S. leadership. But while agreeing with his key foreign policy goals, including confronting the global rise of authoritarianism, they are still taking the measure of the Biden administration — as are America’s foes, say analysts and diplomats.They say the 78-year-old Biden has already shown how a switch in the Oval Office can prompt significant political change with a promise of more to come, not only in the United States but across the globe. Observers in Europe and Asia praise the U.S. leader for his emphasis on multilateral cooperation and the need for a coordinated global effort to tackle climate change. The fresh emphasis on the importance of alliances is a sharp break with Biden’s immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, they note.By Weighing In on Long-running Serbia-Kosovo Dispute, Biden Signals Interest in EuropeUS president has weighed in on long-running dispute between Serbia and Kosovo with letters urging two countries’ leaders to normalize relations based on ‘mutual recognition’Biden has “reset the global agenda by strengthening international cooperation, shifting away from a unilateral approach to leverage the strength of allies and global institutions to see tangible outcomes,” says Siddharth Tiwari, chief representative for Asia at the Bank for International Settlements. He was speaking during an online discussion hosted by Britain’s Financial Times and the Japanese business newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun. In Europe, too, high marks are being given to Biden with some commentators suggesting that despite his age, Biden may turn into a transformative leader. “Politics throws up two sorts of leader,” according to influential British newspaper columnist Philip Stephens. “There are those forever reaching for an umbrella and others, far fewer in number, who set out to change the weather.” He says, “The task of rediscovering the power of agency has fallen to the 78-year-old who has moved into the White House.” Stephens and others highlight the steps Biden is taking at home to reassert the power of government and to try to heal what Trump critics said was America’s “uncivil” political war with an economic expansion plan that has drawn comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s. A $1.9 trillion economic stimulus measure has already been passed by Congress and the White House is advocating for a massive infrastructure and education package that may help to calm the socioeconomic anxieties of white working-class voters who fled the Democratic Party and backed the populist Trump. The economyMany analysts say America’s economic performance will be crucial if the U.S. is to restore its global leadership. “Unless the U.S. economy recovers, then I think the U.S. diplomacy won’t be able to recover from the Trump era,” according to Richard McGregor of Australia’s Lowy Institute research institution. Economic recovery may help Biden to repair some of America’s divisions, according to Georg Löfflmann, an academic at Britain’s University of Warwick. But he notes: “President Joe Biden faces an immense task to bring together a deeply divided nation that remains at odds over key issues from immigration to combating climate change and the enduring legacy of slavery and racism in the United States.”Domestic success will beget greater foreign policy success, observers acknowledge. The two are linked. “In his first 100 days, U.S. President Joe Biden has taken laudable steps to address climate change including establishing a ‘whole of government’ approach, rejoining the Paris Agreement and embedding climate experts to take action across the administration,” according to academics Antony Froggatt and Rebecca Peters. Writing in a paper for Britain’s Chatham House policy institute, the pair caution, though, that the “real challenge looms.” They say, “In order for the U.S. to affirm its legitimacy on climate in a politically divided landscape at home, Biden needs to simultaneously prioritize domestic policy action, while rebuilding international alliances to show that his administration can deliver on its long-term commitments.”While policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic are determined to repair frayed relations and steady democracies roiled by unprecedented domestic political turmoil and challenged by authoritarian powers, there is a recognition that the road ahead will be tricky to navigate. There has been quick agreement on a range of issues with both Brussels and Washington eager for closer collaboration.  European, Other World Leaders Welcome Joe BidenThere were words of welcome Wednesday from across the world for Joe Biden as he was sworn in as America’s 46th presidentSignificant differences remain. The Biden team is encountering some of the same headwinds that contributed to the straining of Euro-Atlantic ties, first during Barack Obama’s tenure in the Oval Office, and then to a much greater degree under Trump, who identified Europe as an economic adversary and complained about NATO’s purpose.All EU national governments have welcomed Biden’s aim of revitalizing U.S.-European ties and are relieved the adversarial language has gone. Washington, however, is now facing an EU that’s turning inward, with the bloc focused on protecting its post-pandemic market and protecting its industrial champions, analysts say, and determined to become more of a global player in its own right. All fo this is likely to aggravate some trade and geopolitical frictions.The post-Second World War transatlantic consensus is also being complicated by splits within the bloc over the best ways to handle the rising power of Communist China and how to manage a revanchist (retaliatory) Russia, they add. That is placing some populist European governments in an especially awkward position — including Hungary. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been accused of hedging his bets between the West and the autocracies of Russia and China.“In the transactional world of Trumpist foreign policy, it was perfectly okay for many European leaders such as Viktor Orban to do this limbo between Eastern autocracies and Western democracies. Right now, they have to choose sides,” Katalin Cseh, a liberal Hungarian politician, said during an online exchange between EU lawmakers discussing Biden’s first 100 days. The discussion was hosted by Visegrad Insight, a Warsaw-based debate platform.But Biden’s more confrontational strategy toward China poses problems also for Europe as a whole, according to the discussion’s participants. “Our challenge is to maintain trade with China while at the same time maintaining our alliance with the United States. It will not be easy,” said Radosław Sikorski, a European lawmaker and former Polish foreign minister. Overload is also seen as a risk ahead for the Biden administration with a daunting number of foreign policy challenges to overcome — not least curbing the spread of the coronavirus and rolling out vaccinations. So far, the Biden administration is given high marks for its blending of clear-eyed pragmatism with idealism in how it is handling Russia, China and Iran, offering both sticks and carrots. “Mr. Biden is attempting a two-track policy, trying at once to resist and relate to such regimes: to constrain their territorial ambitions and discourage their human-rights abuses and transnational meddling, while working with them where their interests might overlap with America’s,” appraised Britain’s Economist magazine. 
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Like all U.S. presidential candidates, Joe Biden spent most of last year’s election campaign making promises. As his 100th day in office approaches — a traditional, if arbitrary, milestone for assessing presidential performance — he has delivered on many of them, but fallen short on others. The president’s campaign promises can be sorted into three broad baskets, regardless of the policy areas in which they fall.  There was the low-hanging fruit — things Biden really could accomplish “on Day One” with the stroke of a pen or the issuance of an order. As of April 15, Biden had signed 49 different executive orders and memoranda, far more than his recent predecessors:  Donald Trump (36), Barack Obama (34) and George W. Bush (12).  Slightly more difficult to achieve, though still within the sole purview of the executive branch, were other policy changes and initiatives that would take some time to implement but could be achieved with no input from members of Congress. Finally, there were the grand promises of a transformed relationship between the two major parties. Biden said he would work to bring Republicans and Democrats together to work in a bipartisan fashion on issues of importance to the country.  Across a wide array of policy areas, Biden quickly accomplished most of the issues in that first basket, and some in the second, but efforts to achieve bipartisan successes in Congress have almost all come up empty.Biden Urges World Leaders to Keep Promises on Climate Following SummitUS president addresses world leaders on final day of virtual climate change summitClimate  Biden was quick to take care of the easy wins on issues related to the climate and global warming. In his first eight days in office, he announced that the U.S. would rejoin the Paris climate accord, issued a slew of executive orders halting projects associated with high greenhouse gas emissions, like the Keystone XL pipeline, and announced that he would ask the Senate to ratify an international accord on reducing the production of hydrofluorocarbons. On Thursday, Biden kept his promise to convene an international climate summit, gathering world leaders for a virtual conference in advance of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November. He pledged to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030, using 2005 levels as a baseline. Biden’s vow to create new energy infrastructure in the U.S., ranging from electronic vehicle charging stations to a smart electrical grid, is part of a massive infrastructure package that is currently working its way through Congress. Other initiatives have been slower to take off. A promise to make 30% of the land and water in the United States subject to conservation requirements has not been fleshed out with an official proposal. The administration is also still working on ways to get the aviation and transport industries to commit to emissions reductions. Biden Moves to Curb US Gun ViolenceUS leader: Mass killings are ‘a blemish on our character as a nation’Guns   Simply put, there isn’t much low-hanging fruit to be had in the debate over gun control in the United States. Earlier this month, the White House announced a pending proposal to slow the proliferation of so-called “ghost guns” that individuals can assemble from separately purchased parts without serial numbers for identification. The administration said that within 60 days it would publish model “red flag” legislation for states, which could block individuals deemed to pose a threat from purchasing firearms. Biden had promised to send Congress a gun control bill, but instead threw his support behind two measures in the House of Representatives strengthening background checks and regulating the transfer of firearms. Both bills passed in that chamber, but are stalled in the Senate. Biden’s promise to sign a bill renewing the Violence Against Women Act is contingent on the bill passing Congress and, while the House approved it in a bipartisan vote last month, the Senate has taken no action. Biden Accelerates Deadline for Opening Up COVID-19 Vaccinations President’s announcement comes amid increase in coronavirus cases among young adults COVID-19  On his first day in office January 20, Biden announced a mask mandate in federal buildings and sent a letter informing the World Health Organization that the U.S. would like to rejoin that organization after the Trump administration withdrew. Biden has also been able to keep, and often exceed, other pandemic-related promises. An initial vow to deliver 100 million vaccinations in 100 days has been greatly exceeded, with twice that number already completed, and the administration made good on promises to set up 100 mass vaccination sites and to create mobile vaccination clinics. A pledge to reopen most schools for in-person instruction has been less successful, in large part because decisions about local school policies are not within the purview of the White House. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did issue guidelines on how to safely reopen schools and other public facilities, but only a little more than half of public schools are open full time for in-person learning.Biden to Lift Refugee Cap Next Month, White House SaysPresident initially retained historically low 15,000-person limit set by Trump administrationImmigration/refugees  Biden did away with former President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban and expanded deportation criteria on his first day in office, and at the same time he halted construction on the wall that the Trump administration was attempting to build on the U.S-Mexico border. He attempted to implement a 100-day “freeze” on deportations, but that effort was blocked by a court ruling. Within the first month of his term, Biden also sent Congress an immigration bill that would create a pathway to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants and announced a program aimed at reuniting children who were separated from their families by the previous administration. As promised, Biden eliminated the “public charge rule” implemented by Trump to prevent recent immigrants from accessing public services. The administration appears to have stumbled badly in its efforts to restore the acceptance of refugees into the U.S. to pre-Trump levels. After promising to accept 62,500 in fiscal year 2022, the administration last week reduced that number to 15,000. The White House then said Biden would raise that number in May, but likely not to the promised level.Biden Lifts Ban on Transgender People in Military Trump had banned further recruitment of transgender people but allowed those already in the military to continue their serviceRacism/Inequity  On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order calling for a comprehensive assessment of racial equity in the federal government and in the services it provides.  Within his first few months in office, Biden had signed multiple executive actions meant to protect people from discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, including the lifting of a ban on transsexuals serving in the armed forces. However, his promise to sign the Equality Act, which would codify many of those protections, has stalled in the Senate after the legislation passed the House in February.  The White House placed a hold on the creation of a police oversight commission, instead electing to work toward passage of a police accountability law in Congress.  Biden Promises Sharply Increased US Engagement Around the WorldNew US president warns Russia and China, while announcing an increase in accepting refugees and an end to support for Saudi offensive against Yemen National security  Biden pledged to restore America’s standing across the globe by reengaging with allies, and in the opening months of his term, he has begun the work of repairing U.S. relations with NATO countries and U.S. security partners in the Pacific region. Biden also promised to bring the U.S. back into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal. Talks to do that have begun, but success is far from assured.
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With U.S. President Joe Biden set to give his first address to a joint session of Congress this week, a slight majority of Americans approves of his performance, according to a recent poll. There are many issues Democrats and Republican leaders expect him to address. Michelle Quinn reports.
Video editor: Mary Cieslak
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